


the act of making noise

by meridies



Series: december prompt week [6]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Flirting, Ice Skating, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Theatre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28276302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meridies/pseuds/meridies
Summary: At nineteen years old, George is expelled from Yale University. He moves to New York City in the autumn of 1940 to learn, as his parents put it, "responsibility." But he finds nothing of the sort.What he does find is that his new roommate, Dream, is the only person who can make George feel truly alive.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Series: december prompt week [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2062995
Comments: 43
Kudos: 764
Collections: Dream Team Safespace Prompt Week 2020





	the act of making noise

**Author's Note:**

> this is an au based on "city of girls" by elizabeth gilbert, and all credit goes to her for this concept/idea/characters. PLEASE read it. right now. it's one of my favorite books ever.
> 
> that being said, the prompt for today was ice skating/snowball fight. enjoy!!

**_Autumn. 1940._ **

George was nineteen years old and an idiot.

It wasn’t precisely that he _was_ an idiot (for George had attended Yale University, although only for a few months), it was more that everyone _thought_ he was an idiot. That may have had something to do _with_ Yale University. The entirety of the first year, George had not attended any of his classes and thereby failed every single one of his freshman exams. He was excused from Yale on account of that.

There were a many number of things that he could have done to turn the tides, but George found that he simply didn’t care much. Yale University wasn’t where he wanted to spend his days. He didn’t particularly care for the different types of cliques that could be found in the most prestigious students of the country. George wasn’t a political revolutionary. He wasn’t a bold academic explorer. He wasn’t a doctor, nor a lawyer, nor a medievalist, nor an artist. What he _was_ was this: a boy with a long legacy behind him of Yale students, with a mother whose checkbook was nearly bursting from her purse.

It didn’t particularly matter to George that he was expelled. He felt as though he was mostly done with learning, and part of that had to do with failing all his classes while the other half had to do with the fact that in February of his freshman year, George discovered a bar just outside the campus that offered cheap beer to underage students. It was easy to slip off campus— no one looked twice at young men in the dead of night— and with a few friends who similarly enjoyed breaking the rules, well, it was much more fun to attend classes hungover than bright eyed and dewy. Being hungover did make it more difficult to pay attention to his classes. That may have been one of the reasons why George stopped attending.

In short: freshman year was a travesty.

That was why his mother had, with a regretful sigh, exclaimed that George needed to _learn some manners._ Learn the ways of the world. Young men shouldn’t be going to bars every night, and they certainly shouldn’t be wasting their studies away. He was disappointing not only his father but every ancestor he had ever had. George thought longingly of the pack of cigarettes in his school luggage, that his mother would certainly flay him alive for possessing, and tuned out the angry diatribe. He simply didn’t care. Yale was in his past. 

That left his mother feeling as though she had no idea what to do with him, and his father feeling as though he was a failure of a son. It wasn’t difficult to feel as such. George’s friends at Yale had passed their freshman exams; they remained. George did not, and spent the last months of summer idly pacing the floors of his family’s summer mansion in the Catskills. He played piano until his fingers grew tired, and thoroughly plundered his father’s whiskey collection when he was bored. That was the final straw— later that afternoon, his parents sat him down and told him that he needed to harness his potential. What better way for a young man to do that than in the greatest city in the world? 

His parents knew a famous playwright who worked at a theater in Manhattan. They could have worried that the city would turn George into a communist, or radicalize him, but anything had to be better than a son who had no idea what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. 

The train tickets were purchased with no return. For the next year and a half, George’s life was effectively signed away. Dimly, he found that he didn’t care much. He took the Empire State Express, straight out of Utica. A gleaming, chrome, delinquent-son delivery service. George said his proper farewells to his parents, handed his baggage over, and without a glance back, boarded the train. One way ticket to the rest of his life.

That was how George Matthews came to New York City, New York, right as the leaves began changing color.

* * *

New York City was just as grand as everything had proclaimed it to be. George stepped off the train in Grand Central Station and promptly found himself lost in the swirling masses. He had been told that someone would pick him up, although George had no idea _who_ or _when_ or _where._ He had no phone number to call in case of emergency, and no knowledge of New York at all. The most he knew was that someone from the theater company was coming to pick him up at Grand Central, and that was that.

To pass the time, George dug out the pack of cigarettes from his pocket. They were slightly crumpled from the weight of his autumn coat, but nevertheless, it only took him two tries to light it. His old lighter was busted. George had to make do with a cheap one, bought at a rest stop. He breathed in and out carefully, by his pile of luggage, and looked around. He had no idea who he was looking for. He barely knew anything about theater at all. Why had his parents sent him here again?

Responsibility, George recalled. That was it. 

Enough time had passed that George eventually gave up hope of being met on the train platform, for clearly, no one was coming for him. He wandered through the rushing crush of humanity that was Grand Central Station, trying to see if anyone would recognize him as he passed by. It was his fault for simply being so forgettable; any man shorter than a lamppost would blend into the crowd, and George was blessed with the most amateur face known to mankind. He gave up his wandering after only a few minutes and sat down, on a prominently placed bench near the main lobby, and simply waited. His cigarette burnt itself down to the filter.

“Are you George Matthews?”

His rescuer turned out to be a boy not unlike himself. He was slightly taller, in clunky black boots, grey shirt, dark tie. He approached George in much the same way that a golden retriever dog would approach a new human. Tail wagging and tongue out, a broad smile spread across the boy’s face. 

“I am,” George said. “You are?”

“Ooh,” the boy grinned. “You’re British. That’s wonderful.”

George regretted speaking. 

“I’ve been looking for you for ages,” the boy exclaimed. “Look at this picture your parents sent me. How ridiculous is this? It barely looks like you.”

The picture, which was wrenched from the boy’s pocket, was of George. It was his freshman year of high school, when his parents decided that their family necessitated being officially photographed. George was young and round-faced, dressed in the boarding school uniform of a Protestant schoolboy, and looked far too childish. It, in truth, looked nothing like him. 

George didn’t speak. The boy looked at George, back at the picture, and stuffed it back into his pants pocket. He seemed terribly like the kind of New Yorker George had expected to encounter. Vivid and bright. 

“Come on then,” the boy exclaimed. “The late night show will be over before we arrive. You’ll miss the operas and everything.”

“I don’t care much for operas.”

“Well,” the boy advised, “If you’re to care about anything, start caring about the late night buses. It’ll be quite the shame if we have to walk all the way from Grand Central to the Lily Theater.”

* * *

A person only got to move to New York City for the first time in their life _once,_ and it was a very big deal.

Long accustomed to the quiet nature of Yale University and the surliness of his parent’s summer mansion, George was truly unused to just how busy the world was outside his small bubble. There was so much going on, and New York City in 1940 was truly miraculous. George found himself staring at everything, while the boy by his side said nothing at all. Even the late night buses were a wonder. The skyscrapers towered overhead, and George felt born anew. 

For all the boy’s talk, the bus ride and subsequent journey to the Lily Theater was not that long. It took them directly through the heart of Manhattan, right through the thick muscle of the city, and it was right at the moment when they drove past the gleaming glow of Central Park that the boy began trying to make polite conversation.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, George,” he said. “I heard you were coming from Yale. Was it nice there?”

“Decent,” George said, and craned his neck to look down Fifth Avenue.

“I think you’ll find that the theater is nice. We’ve been working hard to keep it all in order, you see.”

“Ah,” George said. The conversation wasn’t interesting. What _was_ interesting was the way New York City looked as night was falling. It was a wonderful autumn night, and the sky was purple and glowing. Arcades and taxi-dance halls and movie palaces and mirrored skyscrapers passed before his eyes, all bewitching camaraderie. 

The bus turned onto Forty-first street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. The street was not the dramatic street that it is today, right off of Times Square. In 1940, it was mostly a tangle of fire escapes for the larger, brighter buildings that faced Fortieth and Forty-Second Streets. The boy reached up and demanded for the bus to stop; it creaked to a halt, right there in front of the Lily Theater. 

“This is us,” the boy said, and picked up the second of George’s trunks. “Come on, now.”

George followed him.

“Welcome to the Lily Theater,” the boy proclaimed. “It’s late, I think the show is over by this point— I do hope Niki’s left the door open for me, or else we’ll be stuck out here for hours.”

Niki must have been another performer at the theater. George didn’t bother asking. 

The boy jiggled the doorknob more impatiently, until finally, it clicked open. He shot a look of relief to George, who felt nothing more than nonplussed, and followed him inside. He dropped his luggage by the floor and took a heaving breath, taking everything in.

The Lily Theater was nothing short of magnificent. It was all dramatic darkness, with rich, handcrafted woodwork and Tiffany light fixtures. Carpet unfurled beneath George’s feet in blood red. Murals lined the walls, mimicries of Italian frescos, and thickly carved vines of grapes and wisteria and lilies (for that was the theater’s namesake, wasn’t it?) crawled up the sides. All in all, it was a tremendous thing to take in.

And that was only the lobby, for the boy pushed through two massive, swinging double doors, and George emerged into a place that was wholly unlike anything he had experienced before. 

George was rather dazzled. The interior of the theater was quite stunning, even if the audience had long since drained out and all the lights were on, displaying the set in its full beauty. It was very grandiose, with hefty crimson curtains and a huge, golden-lit stage. The chairs were all carpeted in the same velvet that lined the floor. George curiously touched it; the fabric was crumpled, in a way that signaled a theatergoer had sat in that very chair only a few hours past. He had missed the spectacle of it all, purely by chance of being lost in Grand Central.

“Welcome,” the boy huffed— George’s luggage was quite heavy— “To the Lily Theater.” 

“Wonderful,” George said. “Ah— where is everyone?”

The boy blinked. “Backstage, of course! We’ve just finished a show. That’s where all the magic occurs.”

* * *

Backstage was full of the busy, wanton clamor that always erupted in the wings at the end of a show. Everyone was moving and shouting at each other, and more than one person was lighting a cigarette for the other. Girls covered in feathers and jewels and scales rushed by, and more than one was singing at the top of her lungs, accent thick and vibrant. The boy pushed his way through a gaggling crowd and George attempted to follow; someone draped their arm over his shoulders, languid and tugging, and another pulled at the hem of his shirt. There was much overripe laughter, hanging like a plump, swollen peach from a tree. Nothing about the situation was funny; that was simply how backstage was.

“Here we are,” the boy panted, and dropped George’s luggage with a thud. George winced at how callously he treated it. “I’ll go find Wilbur, wait one moment, won’t you?”

He did not give George a moment to respond before disappearing into the throng. George tried to keep track of his hair as it moved through the crowd and found that he could not; the boy was dissolved like mist in midday sunlight. Although he had never been surrounded by more people, George felt peculiarly lost. It was a very odd feeling.

“Hello,” someone said, and startled George from his thoughts. “You must be the new arrival. All the way from the Catskills.”

The woman whose eye was caught by George had her hair piled in glossy coils atop her head, and her makeup gave her a look of otherworldly glamour. She was a platinum blonde, which caught the backstage lights like nothing else could.

“I suppose,” George said. 

“It’s quite nice to have you here,” she said, and extended a slim, sylphlike arm, “I’m Alyssa.”

George fumbled to shake her hand back. He felt quite modest next to her, and next to the ravishing beauty of the theater. “I’m George Matthews. Nineteen.”

“Eighteen,” Alyssa said, and a hint of her smile showed the childishness of an eighteen-year-old that rarely could be found elsewhere. “Are you planning to stay long?”

George didn’t know himself. It was up to his parents, wasn’t it? Or until he learned responsibility, surely. He said, “I believe so.”

“The winter months are always the best,” Alyssa advised, and without taking any note of anything, began to unpin her hair, one coil at a time. She dropped the pins with grandiose displays of nonchalance by her side. “Did you arrive in time to see the show?”

George shook his head.

“It was stunning,” Alyssa said, “The audience was full, all the way to the back. I’m thinking we’ll make it to Broadway if the papers keep reporting like this. I know Wilbur’s thinking of moving locations— it’ll be sad to see the Lily go, of course, but could you imagine how we would look on Broadway, of all places!”

George couldn’t imagine. He had never visited New York before. He simply nodded and hoped that the boy who had retrieved him from the train station would return soon. 

“You’ve met Wilbur, of course,” Alyssa said. At George’s hesitant shake of his head, her lipsticked mouth fell open. “The playwright, of course. He came here all the way from Los Angeles, didn’t he? The entire cast was shocked at it.”

George cast his mind out and attempted to recall if there was a famous playwright with the name of _Wilbur_ who he had encountered in the newspapers. He couldn’t think of one. Perhaps he was new and upcoming.

“Anyway,” Alyssa said, and unpinned the final pin from her hair, sending it cascading down in waves of shining silver, “Did you just get in today? It must have been late. Who picked you up?”

George, again, was speechless. For the life of him, he couldn’t recall whether the boy who picked him up from Grand Central had told him his name or not. 

As George was about to admit that he had no clue, he was saved. The boy returned, looking flushed from the heat of backstage, but he was dragging someone behind him by hand, in a neatly pressed, double-breasted cinderblock of a suit. 

“I see you’ve found Alyssa,” the boy said, with a broad grin, “I’ve brought Wilbur to you— you’ve heard of Wilbur Soot, right?”

His gaze begged for George to say yes. Surprisingly, George didn’t have to lie this time. He recognized the name now. An up and coming, newly budding playwright who worked out west, and had somehow found the time to travel across the continent to support a crumbling theater company. 

“I have,” George said, and offered a hand out, for that was the polite thing to do. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“And you,” Wilbur Soot said. “Sorry you arrived so late. Your parents said your train tickets would arrive in time to view the show.” 

“They did,” George said. 

“Karl,” Alyssa whispered, “George here was saying that he didn’t know your name.”

George flushed; that wasn’t what he had said at all, but the boy— whose name was now Karl, George supposed— blanched, and offered a hand out.

“My manners,” he said jovially, “I have to apologize. I’m Karl, Karl Jacobs— I’m one of Wilbur’s assistants.”

“One of?”

“Well, the director’s got to have at least two, right?”

George couldn’t argue with that. “Who’s the other?”

Wilbur shrugged, lax and imperious. “You’ll meet them later. I assume you’re tired?”

George had stifled many yawns in his life. He said, “A little.”

“In that case,” Wilbur said, “Let me show you to your room.”

* * *

It was there, in the upstairs apartment of a crumbling, grandiose theater in the heart of New York City, where George Matthews met Dream Holland for the first time. 

_Dream_ was his stage name. He never told George his first name, only hinted mysteriously at it, and he carried with him such an air of importance that George felt pulled to it. 

He was also, quite excitingly, George’s roommate. 

“This is where you’ll be sleeping,” Karl said, and ushered George onto a dimly lit landing. It was one of the cramped apartments above the Lily Theater, and it was clearly only meant for one person, because Dream’s entire closet seemed to have been sprawled across the space. The apartment was on the fifth floor, where the theater took up the entirety of the first and second floors. The third and fourth floors belonged to Wilbur and those who worked closely with him; all the way up to the tenth floor was fair game. Apparently, the only place that had space was the fifth floor. 

George would have been humiliated to have a stranger see his space as messy as it was. Dream seemed to have no such qualms. He marched directly in, flung open the curtains, and gazed out onto the alleyway that was Forty-first Street. 

“Welcome,” he said, with a grand gesture, “To my humble abode.”

“You’ll be staying with Dream,” Wilbur said politely, “I wish you could have a room to yourself, but we’re booked at the moment— nearly everything is full. Dream was generous enough to offer his space.”

“That’s very kind of him,” George said faintly, and followed him inside. Karl entered as well, while Wilbur turned and left. 

“There’s the spare bed,” Dream pointed, “Sapnap helped me set it up just last night. I wish you’d given us some more warning before he arrived. I’m a slob.”

“This is Dream at his cleanest,” Karl muttered to George. “Get used to the mess.”

“Of course,” George said. He was not particularly excited. 

“And you can put all your luggage over there—” Dream pointed again, to an empty space against the wall— “I can help you unpack in the morning. Karl and Sapnap will come, won’t they?”

He directed the last part of his sentence to Karl, who nodded quickly.

“The last person to stay with me was Sapnap,” Dream said, and this he directed to George. “Though he’s a mess, even worse than me. It’s good he moved out rather than I did.”

“Ah,” George said faintly.

“You can meet him tomorrow.” Dream tapped two fingers to his chin. “Oh! Or tonight. Unless you want to stay in?”

George had no idea what nineteen year old men did in New York after the lights went out. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to know. He attempted to find his voice and came up with, “Stay in?”

Dream nodded, even though George had asked a question. “Fair. You’ve had a day of traveling, better get some rest.” His smile was toothy. “Until it’s too loud to get any sleep at all.”

George must have nodded. 

“Well?” Dream said, and turned to face him. “There’s space in the bathroom for a toothbrush and toiletries— I’m sure I can clear out a space in the closet if need be, although it doesn’t look like you’ve brought much things. I heard you played music?”

His mind seemed to jump around, faster than the brilliant lights of taxi cabs cutting each other off in the riveting streets. George could hardly follow.

“Piano,” he said, “And some violin.”

Dream nodded approvingly. “I should introduce you to Niki. She's our other violinist. It’ll be wonderful to have another person on board like her.”

As far as he knew, George was nothing like anyone else who worked at the Lily Theater. They were all fresh and newly minted, gleaming brighter than the sun off the mirrored windows of the Empire State Building. George was a dull, uninteresting paper directly off the printing press. One could find a million men exactly like him at any university across the country. It was a wonder how he had ended up in the same place as all of these people, who were brighter than a flare shot in the night sky.

“Is Niki your orchestra conductor?” George asked curiously.

Dream looked at him and then laughed. “Oh, George. We don’t have one of those.”

He flicked his fingers in the direction of one of the closed doors. “That’s the bathroom, in case you were wondering. I need to get ready.”

With that, he turned his attention to the mirror, a compact thing, tilted against the wall. Dangling from it were all sorts of beads and bangles; things that one would expect to belong in the dressing room for a musical rather than a boy’s apartment. George didn’t know quite what to make of it. 

George unpacked a few essentials, splashed some water on his face, and quickly ran fingers through his hair. It was back to the clutter of the living room after that; though in the few moments he was gone, Dream had begun cleaning up with brisk, effective movements. He had changed his outfit, too; whatever costume he was in for the theater’s show had transformed into a slim look, a white shirt tucked into button-up slacks, and black shoes that shone brighter than the streetlamps outside. 

“Where are you going?”

Dream paused, one hand on a coat, the other on his necktie. “I’m going out, of course.”

George glanced at the time; it was displayed on a massive, aged grandfather clock against the wall. It was nearing midnight, and so he told Dream. 

“Why, George,” Dream said, with an air of unconcern, “The city is only beginning to become alive! It’s the city that never sleeps.”

He slung his coat on the rest of the way. It was a slim fitting green thing, deep emerald, and he tightened his necktie all the way to his Adam’s apple. 

“Try and get some sleep,” Dream advised, “There are big things planned for tomorrow!”

And with that, he was gone.

* * *

George soon found that Dream was by far the most curious person he had met in his entire life.

So were the entirety of the people at the Lily Theater. The neighborhood it was in was the most exotic place George had ever been; the four-story tenements surrounding the Lily were crammed full of recent immigrants. Walking down the street, George could hear any known language spoken at once. It was full of Irish and Italians, with a scattering of Catholic Eastern Europeans, as well as a good number of Jewish families. George noticed how Wilbur— who managed everything with little more than a sweep of his hand— did his best to accommodate everything into his show. He kept the languages simple, so the audiences could grow ever larger, and this appealed to the performers too— none of them were trained thespians, so George learned. They were all amateurs who threw themselves out to the rabid wolves of the critics.

Apparently, as Karl told him one night, there was a time when the Lily Theater had begun crumbling into disrepair. Their shows had been falling apart at the seams, unable to keep more than a scattering in their seats for long, and it was a stroke of luck that Wilbur Soot showed up when he did. None of them knew why he travelled to them; Wilbur never spoke a word as to his reasoning. But his very presence boosted the theater’s revenue and popularity. Theatergoers flocked to them in hordes; Wilbur welcomed them all with a smile that screamed Hollywood. 

Along with the theatergoers, so too came the critics. These, Wilbur said offhandedly, he was less grateful for. Still, their reviews had been largely positive, with only a few minor complaints. These, Wilbur brushed off with little care. He was a playwright, he said, and it was up to the performers to feel the shame of not acting up to standards.

George wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that, but he left Wilbur to his writings and continued onward. 

The other thing that George learned is that while his entire life he had been told that music was a ridiculous career to choose, and he would get nowhere with it, somehow he had found the one place in the world that needed him. 

“I’ve heard you write songs,” Sapnap said, and cornered him one afternoon backstage.

Sapnap was Hell’s Kitchen born and raised. He was pure Forty-ninth street, right to the core. Dream had told him that he grew up playing stickball on that very street. Sapnap had thought briefly about becoming a chef at the Latin Quarter restaurant, while he was still a waiter slumming it to pay rent, when Dream had entered his life. With the stellar arrogance and appeal that Dream seemed to carry wherever he went, Sapnap had entered the show business life. He had never looked back since. 

“I do,” George said. He thought of the pages of music he had brought from the Catskills with him, buried underneath clothes he had purchased with the weekly allowance his parents still sent him. “What about it?”

“Would you write a song for the Lily?”

George blinked. He had never considered that.

“Do you really think I would be good enough for that?”

Sapnap smiled, as if they were sharing a secret. “Wilbur asked me to come to you. I suppose that’s your answer, isn’t it?”

George thought about it. “I’d need to use the grand piano.” 

“Whatever you need,” Sapnap said, and left him to it.

George glanced over at the piano, freshly polished, without a speck of dust. Music had always been a talent of his, though no one had ever encouraged him to pursue it. At Yale, he was studying to be a lawyer. Political science classes bored him to no end.

Out of curiosity, George crossed the theater to the piano. It was inviting and luxurious beneath his fingertips and it sang when George played a chord, shining and glorious.

Well, then. He supposed that was his answer.

* * *

The other thing about the Lily Theater was that once its occupants learned about how little George had experienced, they seemed dedicated to show him everything. 

To this day, George wishes he had kept the map that Alyssa scrawled for him one afternoon, inky upon a restaurant paper napkin. It was blocky and stiff and she starred the most important things; Grand Central Station; Central Park; Times Square, right where they were, the middle of the entire world. 

She frowned at the trio: Dream, Karl, Sapnap, who were looking at the map, pointing out places George should visit. “You won’t take him anywhere dangerous?” 

“Of course not,” Dream said confidently. “He’s a university boy, though, he can handle himself.”

George wanted to cringe at that. “I’m not sure—”

“Relax,” Sapnap sighed, “We’ll keep him in a good place.”

“You’d better,” Alyssa warned, though her tone was light and unconcerned. “I don’t trust George to hold his whiskey any better than I can.” 

“He’s a doll,” Sapnap assured, “We’re only showing him around.” Then he turned to Dream and said, “Coney Island is wonderful this time of year, isn’t it?”

Dream tapped a finger to his chin. “I believe so.” 

“Well?” Karl said, always giddy, like a puppy, “We have time. The evening show doesn’t start until six, doesn’t it?”

“Rehearsals are at four,” Alyssa reminded them.

“For you,” Dream corrected. 

“Grab your coat,” Sapnap interrupted, with a nudge to George’s side, “And bring some money, won’t you? It’ll be quicker if we take a taxi.” 

So they drove out to Coney Island with the taxi windows down, smoking and laughing. It was one of the last warm days of autumn and Karl intended to spend it as best as possible. George was wedged in the backseat between Sapnap and Karl, while Dream chatted away with the driver upfront. 

Coney Island was all shiny and gaudy and delirious. George found himself tugged along like a child who was learning how to swim for the first time. Dream intended to do everything that was fun. He made George slip his shoes off and dip his feet in the water. The four of them crammed into a photobooth and took pictures, laughing and hazy. George’s parents had given him an allowance per week, and so George spared a few dollars for candied apples and lemon ices among the four of them. The boardwalk was overrun with loud families and young couples and four young men, who were anything but bored.

It was then, in the taxi ride back, when George realized just how boring his life had been in university and boarding school. How dull he must have been— how he still was! At that moment, George refused to be bored _or_ boring ever again. If this was what New York was— the wild sprees, gluttonous appetites for _more,_ and the nonstop search for action, George wanted every piece of it. He wanted the delicious, blinded yearnings of the young. 

By God, would he get it. 

* * *

Within two weeks of moving to New York City, George’s life had changed completely. 

The Lily Theater was unlike any other world he had ever inhabited before. It was a living animation of glamor and grit and mayhem and fun— it was a world full of adults who had all the rights to behave like children. There was no order, no regimentation like there was at Yale and his earlier boarding school, which George had attended from the tender age of twelve all the way to eighteen. All that regimentation which had desperately attempted to drill into George had vanished. Now, there was only the brilliant, blinding life of the theater.

To George’s delight (and Dream’s surprise at said delight) drinking was the norm. George didn’t think Dream had expected him to be able to hold his liquor as well as he could; he discovered that one night, when Karl, Sapnap, Dream, and George were cloistered on the floor of Dream’s apartment, sharing a bottle of champagne. They had first laughed at his reluctance to drink but were impressed by how neatly George cleared the bottle.

The other thing about the Lily Theater was that plans changed by the moment. Guests came and went with the wind (George seemed the only guest who stayed for long, though his music and songwriting had made him a seemingly permanent factor), and there was no figure of authority to monitor whatever George did. This was the strangest thing to become accustomed to. For the last few years of his life, as all “good young men” should be, George had been monitored and closely watched. Now, there was no one to witness his comings and goings. Only Dream, who had stayed by his side ever since the first night George had met him. 

For the first time in a long while, George felt free.

Dream took full advantage of this. 

He was one of the lead actors for the show, which George could understand. His new roommate seemed to thrive off of attention, and barely cared who he got it from. It was a very curious thing to witness. 

The more he stayed with Dream, the more infatuated George became, with every one of his movements. He moved like he hadn’t a care in the world. He waved his hands around when talking like a debutante, could stomach his liquor to compete even with the strongest of men, could deck out a punch and take one in return, in the middle of seedy bars in Midtown. He didn’t bother wiping the lipstick off his cheek when Alyssa kissed him, bright red. He only laughed, acting like the entire world’s eyes were upon him (and by God, they were). 

At Yale and in his men’s boarding school, there had been homosexuals. As blind as he was, George could see that as clear as day. But he himself had never delved into such things; sex wasn’t for George. It had never been that way, even when his friends emerged, stumbling drunk, with girls on their arms. He hadn’t particularly cared. He only laughed with them and waved them goodbye when they went their separate ways.

It was strange to see people who were so open. It was 1940. The entire world was closeted and on the brink of terrible war. Yet, in this spare theater off Eighth Avenue, their ragtag group of performers were wholly open with each other. George didn’t know what to make of it. 

* * *

The strangest thing happened one night.

Dream did it without warning, without asking. There was no discussion about it whatsoever, it just happened— at the most unexpected time, too. Somewhere in the dark hours between midnight and dawn on Day Twenty of George’s new life in New York, Dream stumbled into their shared apartment, woke him up with a hard jolt to the shoulder, and uttered one drunken word:

“Scoot.”

George, half asleep, scooted. He moved over to the other side of the bed, and Dream tumbled onto the mattress, necktie undone. He commandeered George’s pillow, stole half the blankets, and fell asleep before George could even fully comprehend what had happened.

He lay there, frozen. Dream’s weight next to him was startling and oddly comforting. He smelled like cologne and alcohol. The kind of fruity drink that only girls bought. He had no idea what to do, and so George simply laid there, listening to his slow breathing, and wondering how he would tackle the inevitable awkwardness in the morning.

As it turned out, there was barely an awkwardness. Dream roused himself before the clock hit eight and rubbed at his eyes. He had a lipstick mark in bright pink along his collarbone, and he laughed when he saw it in the mirror. 

“Apologies for stealing your bed, Georgie,” he said. “You don’t mind, do you?”

George could have listened to Dream call him _Georgie_ all day long, every day.

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

That was how he and Dream came to be bedmates, in more ways than one.

* * *

Within a month, he and Dream had established a sort of routine. Every night after the show was finished, Dream would wipe off his stage makeup in the tiny compact mirror and throw on his outfit for the evening. He would head out in the night for presumably hours full of debauchery and excitement. Meanwhile, George would go and find Karl (who was quickly becoming his only friend who wasn’t actively partying all the time) and the two of them would eat dinner together. George would go to sleep by eleven sharp; around three hours later, he would feel Dream, still dressed, still half drunk, stumble in, and fall asleep right next to him. They seemed to get closer every night; one time, George woke up to find Dream’s hand in his. Neither of them mentioned it in the morning. 

To his joy and surprise, Dream had become George’s friend. 

He was vain and sometimes arrogant beyond measure. He seemed to care little for the pleasures of others and only about himself. He dedicated little time to anything in the world besides seemingly having fun. He was glorious and exciting and seemed the perfect, glittering distillation of everything New York City was. He was like a spot of vibrancy, sailing through the neon and shadows of New York. It was embarrassing to admit, but George felt that he would have followed him anywhere.

Dream, for all his arrogance and self-obsession, seemed to be aware of this. But he never acted, and George never asked, and so they remained twin focal points of attraction. George wasn’t blind enough to miss the looks Dream gave him, when George sat down at the Lily Theater’s grand piano and attempted to play his best showtunes. 

Dream would sing along, sometimes, in a voice that was low and husky and smoother than butter. He would point out the notes that he had to stretch to hit and the ones that would flow better together, and George came to rely upon Dream’s advice as much as Wilbur’s. 

“This note,” he would say, “Slow it down.” He would turn the next page of music and mimic the way George’s fingers were splayed on the piano. “Wouldn’t a key change be good here? At the crux of the song?” He stretched his hands over George’s, warm and alluring. “Right here, see.”

George did see. He was wholly blinded by the world. 

“It’s a beautiful song,” Dream said, and a question: “Play it again?” 

* * *

In New York City, there were men.

So many men.

Men in outfits that barely covered their arms and legs and men that were clothed head to toe. Men in double-breasted suits that slimmed their figures down to silhouettes. With hands that belonged in Tiffany advertisements for rings and jewelry and bodies that rivaled even the greatest New York showgirls. Lips and shoulders and collarbones and hands. George found himself staring at the way they moved. They seemed greater than even the tallest skyscraper. They moved as if they owned the world itself. George knew that the appeal of New York was in its girls— he found, shockingly, that he didn’t care for them one bit.

How he had never come to that conclusion in all his years of all boy’s boarding school, George had no clue. 

“Stop staring,” Dream murmured, low and intoxicating. “Just how uptight are you?”

George managed to tear his eyes away from the sights of the crowds. “I’m not. I was at university, you know.”

“Where, again?”

“Yale,” George said, and he must have said it with an air of pompousness, for Dream laughed at him. He doubled over and laughed, right in the middle of the street.

“Yale,” he wheezed, “That’s classic. How rich.”

Stung, George replied, “It’s a rather decent school, you know.”

“Surprised you didn’t go to _Oxford,_ with that accent of yours.”

It seemed too crass to say that there was no way George would have gotten into Oxford with his grades and attitude at boarding school, and so he had aimed for Yale, which was certain to let him in due to his nature of being a legacy. He turned his nose in the air and refused to respond to Dream’s taunts.

Dream didn’t let up. He clapped a hand onto George’s shoulder and pulled him back to walk side by side. “So, tell me, Georgie, in this university of yours, how many theater shows did you go to?”

George pulled his shoulder from Dream’s grasp. “I went to none. I read theater, like all the elites do.”

“ _Read_?”

“Doctor Faustus, King Lear,” George said, and felt dangerously scrutinized, “Of the sort.”

“Reading theater,” Dream said, “How sad that must be.”

“I wouldn’t consider it—”

“Theater is meant to be _seen_ ,” Dream crowed, loud enough for half of the city to hear him. “It has to be watched and viewed and _sung,_ George, there’s no way to get that all from a book.”

“I disagree,” George tried to argue, but Dream spoke right over him.”

“How can you possibly understand the entirety of a play if you don’t watch it right in front of you?” He gestured grandly at the towering skyscrapers. “That’s shameful. You should be ashamed, George.”

“I’m not ashamed,” George said, through gritted teeth. “It wasn’t as though I had the opportunity to see everything in person—”

Dream paused. He glanced back at George. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“What?”

Dram waved a hand gallantly. “Broadway. The center of the world. You said you saw King Lear? I’m sure there’s a showing of it playing somewhere we can find.”

“I’m not sure that’s necessary.”

“You are so stuck up,” Dream sighed, “Come on, let’s go.”

He grabbed onto George’s hand. George was too shocked to pull away. 

“What are you doing?” he hissed. They were in public, in the center of Times Square. All their action had to be reserved for the privacy of their apartment, where no one could see them, not even their fellow performers. 

“You’re coming with me,” Dream said, wholly unconcerned.

He tugged George along, into the wild spree of the crowds. George managed to free his hand, but instead Dream clapped an arm around his shoulder.

“Relax, darling,” he said, New York accent low. George shivered. “We’re going to blow up together. Are you in or out?”

There were a million words exchanged in that conversation that were never spoken out loud. George felt as if he were on the edge of a tremendously tall cliff and realizing that not only could he fall, he could fly. 

He said, “I’m in.”

“Come with me,” Dream said, and his eyes were glittering, gluttonous with the thrill, “Let me show you what real theater is like.”

* * *

**_Winter. 1940._ **

The first snowfall hit New York City seemingly overnight. George flung a hand over his eyes and grimaced when he saw that Dream had thrown the blinds open, even though the two of them had been out late into the night, almost until the sun rose.

“You’re insufferable,” George sighed, and rolled over.

“You slept in,” Dream said. 

“I never understand how you wake up earlier than me and fall asleep later.” 

“Youth,” Dream answered, “The precious glow of youth.”

He was right about that; there was something precious about being so young and having so much freedom. What was sleep but a pause from the excitement of life? 

George reached for the pack of cigarettes lying on the bedside table when he regained enough energy to stir; Dream came over and flicked his lighter, right under George’s nose, and lit it for him.

He gestured with two fingers. “Give it here.” 

George did. Dream wrapped his lips around it, the paper which was surely wet from George’s lips, and took a slow inhale. He met George’s eyes across the glow of the smoke, and his eyes held a thousand words that could never be spoken.

There was a good deal of information conveyed across the silence. That was what flirtation was in its purest form, a conversation held without words. Flirtation was a series of silent questions that one person asked another with their eyes only. And the answer to those questions was always the same: _maybe._

“Here you are,” Dream said, and passed the cigarette back. He never acknowledged those silent conversations, though he was the biggest flirt George had and would ever see. “We have a big day planned, we’ve just been waiting for you to wake up.”

“We?”

“Karl, Sapnap, and I,” Dream said. “We’re going ice skating by Rockefeller Center. It’s only a stone’s throw from here.”

Even after months, George still had no idea of the layout of Manhattan. He only had Dream’s instinct to go on, Karl’s quick judgements, and Sapnap’s laughter at their guesses.

“How many blocks?”

Dream shrugged. “A decent amount. They just put up the Christmas tree, it’s a tradition. You’re not a New Yorker, but you might as well come with us.” 

Who was George to argue with that?

* * *

It was shaping up to be a lengthy winter. The week before New York had been hit with a murderous snowstorm, and it took every occupant of the city weeks to dig out from under it. The Lily Theater, despite growing in popularity and thrill, was a drafty old building. The dressing rooms were better suited for storing costumes than warming people. 

Fortunately, that day was one of the warmest in a while, a bright, gladdening winter day. The sun was out and shone down onto them. Rockefeller Center was only a few blocks away, and the sidewalks were long clear of snow or ice. 

“Here,” Karl said, and showed George how to lace his ice skates. One over the other, pulling tight. He wobbled when he stood up, though Sapnap didn’t look much better in terms of balance. “It’s easy. We can all go at once.”

“I’m not too sure about this,” George breathed, but he did feel oddly more secure when he was on ice. The skates were built to slip around, after all, and he clung to the railing. Dream, who seemed effortlessly talented at everything, challenged Karl to a race around the rink. He moved with the speed of a peregrine; he was like a dancer. He barely blinked and Dream had circled back to him and Sapnap. 

“Well?” he laughed. “Getting the hang of it?”

George must have been staring like a deer in headlights.

“Getting better,” he said, and chalked the redness in his expression up to the blustering wind. 

“Here,” Dream assured, “Follow my movements. You’ll be an expert in no time.”

He wasn’t an expert in no time. In fact, George was painfully aware that he would never be an expert. 

He slipped once, a bump in the ice which skewed his skates to the side, and down he went, in a tumble of winter coats and scarves. Dream offered him a hand and pulled him to his feet— pulled him right up next to him. 

“Is this alright?”

It was alright. In fact, it was much warmer there, cocooned in Dream’s arms. George had been freezing out there, standing on Fifth Avenue in the icy wind with a thin coat. The cold was pinching at his feet and hands, but now, he found himself suddenly feeling quite flushed. It must have had something to do with how close Dream was standing to him. He was nearly pressed up against him. 

“Thank you for helping me up,” George said, and took a steadying step back. 

“It’s no trouble at all,” Dream said, and they continued moving. 

It was the fifteenth lap around the rink when Karl and Sapnap stumbled off.

“Leave them,” Dream advised, when George expressed some worry about them leaving the two of them behind, “They need some time alone.”

“I don’t mind,” George said faintly, “Just you is fine.”

“Oh,” Dream smiled, “Consider it the same for you.” 

The snow was falling thickly now, blurring the lines between them. As if reading his mind, Dream smiled. 

“ _People to whom sin is just a matter of words_ ,” he quoted, “ _To them salvation is just words too_.” 

“ _As I Lay Dying_ ,” George recognized. “I didn’t take you for a well-read student.”

“I’m not,” Dream grinned. 

“You read Faulkner?”

“I think it’s a rather interesting quote,” Dream said. “Isn’t it?”

George was raised a WASP— a White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. His parents were of the matter “out of sight, out of mind,” and he recalled going to church every Sunday with them. WASPs were not sinners. They believed salvation was more than just words.

It occurred to him that not once in all his time in New York had he crossed himself nor said a prayer.

“I suppose,” George said.

“And are you?”

“Hm?”

“Are you a sinner?”

Dream’s gaze wasn’t prying. Merely curious. 

“I’m not,” George said. “A sinner, that is.”

“Are you sure?”

Dream’s voice was mild. There was an undercurrent of accusation to it, but not a sharp one; merely questioning the way things were. 

George realized that he had no answer for that.

“Come on,” Dream said, and offered a hand, neatly cleaving the tension. “Let’s get off this rink.” 

“It’s not half bad,” George said, as Dream watched him cling to the side and slowly move his way towards the exit, teetering on the axis of sin and salvation. The two of them collapsed onto a bench, and George bent down to untie his skates. Sapnap and Karl were nowhere to be found, having vanished into the city streets.

“Ice skating gets easier as you go,” Dream assured him. “We can go another time.”

“Maybe I won’t fall over half as much if we go again.”

“I guarantee it.” 

“You think so?”

With the cockiest grin: “I know so.”

That same, wordless conversation, conveyed only through glances. Flirtation was an art, and George was learning it piece by piece. Dream was more than willing to help him along the way. He held eye contact for a long moment, skates dangling from their laces. Pink dusted his cheeks; snow melted upon his hair. George found that he couldn’t take his eyes away. 

Dream said, “Yes?”

He was asking him something. George was not sure how to respond, so he said:

“Maybe?”

Then Dream asked it again, “Yes?”

“Yes,” George decided.

Dream tilted his head and looked at George closer. The smile had slipped from his face. It was more intimate, more private. 

“Yes?” he said, one more time, and that was when George realized that he was asking him about something entirely different. Something that could not be spoken out loud, in the middle of a crowded city, but could only be hinted at. 

In an entirely different tone, George said, “ _Yes_.”

* * *

Sweet mercy, could Dream _kiss._

One hand on each side of George’s face, with his fingers reaching into his hair. He seemed to explore every inch of George that threatened to burst at the seams. He was forked lightning; there was a nearly frightful _extravagance_ to it. There was so _much_ to Dream. So much that George felt he would never keep up. It astonished him how Dream could be as ferocious in his want for George that George felt for him. 

This was affirmed when Dream murmured, “You are ridiculously gorgeous.” 

In between breaths: “Am I?”

“Quite honestly,” Dream breathed, “You’re the most damn beautiful man on the face of this planet.”

“Mm,” George managed, for Dream’s mouth, his words and all, sucked away all intuition, “Tell me more.”

“Take this off,” Dream said, plucking at George’s buttoned top, smiling like the cat that got the cream, “And I will.” 

After that, it was over. 

George realized that he was truly infatuated with Dream. More than infatuation, he was simply smitten. Something about the man— and George didn’t even know his real name!— had taken hold over him. He would have lain there and let Dream do whatever he wished, over and over, and the night would have stretched on into oblivion. He and Dream, two sparks of electricity ricocheting through a winter storm. Striking the earth over and over with lightning. Volcanic in their raptures. Flayed with longing. 

It was that night, George recalled, that was seared into his memory forever.

* * *

**_Spring. 1941._ **

“Here,” Dream said, and beckoned with two fingers, “Cigarette.”

Obligingly, George passed him one. Dream flicked his lighter open, lighting up his face with flickers of orange. He had the windows cracked, though spring rains threatened to soak the fine yellow silks that hung in their living room. 

The Lily Theater had undergone some very important refurbishments. Seats that had been sagging and dull were replaced with spotless velvet ones, which were as soft as the bedsheets George slept upon. The ceiling had been repainted, for the Italian fresco mimicries were flaking down onto the audience. George was tasked upon to help repair the lights with Niki, the other violinist in their crew, and they had a pleasant yet bland conversation about upstate New York. Niki was born in Poughkeepsie and dropped out of Vassar, same as George had left Yale. In that way, George supposed, they were quite similar. 

The critics flocked to the Lily Theater in raves and left sated by the brilliant performances. Dream in particular was a stand out. The women loved him; the men did too (though they were less loud in their affections). Alyssa delivered a show-stopping number in the middle of the second half that brought the entire audience to their feet. Wilbur’s pockets grew ever larger and, trickling down, so did the rest of theirs. A cut was given to all the performers. George, somehow, had become one of those. He played the piano for his friends until his fingers ached. At night, he fell asleep in vibrancy. He was always seeking out the _vivid._

The _vivid_ had come, however, in a letter from his parents. While most of their letters demanded to know whether George had learned responsibility— and this, George laughed at, sharing the letters with his friends (for what was more responsible than a son who drank liquor like it was water and spent his nights with another man?)— this most recent letter had been a laudation of his older brother, Henry. 

Henry had just dropped out of Princeton— not to live a life of delinquency, like George had intended, but to join the Navy. He was starting at Officer Candidate School in three weeks, and would be training right there in New York City, on the Upper West Side. When Henry eventually graduated from there, he would ship out in the spring to Europe.

His parents, despite being miserable and dour about George leaving school, were positively thrilled about the idea of their boy in the military. For all their talk about how sailors were _working-class kids with no other options for advancement,_ they were damn proud of their son, becoming a true patriot, fighting the Nazis. 

George, meanwhile, smoked and drank and screwed his way through New York nightlife. He couldn’t care less about the war. What was he supposed to do? They only took men who had gone through two years of college, and George had only been through one. 

“Here,” Dream hummed, and passed the cigarette to George. With a word of quiet thanks, George accepted it; there was a mark on his collarbone from the night earlier. George watched the way Dream’s shoulders flexed when he stretched up, pushed himself from the bed. 

He and Dream had fallen into a strange zenith. He was certain that the entirety of the Lily Theater knew about the two of them, and yet nobody commented. George did his best not to think about it too much. He was still young— not a child, but certainly not entirely grown up. 

“Well?” Dream said, once George had breathed in the smoke, “Pass it back.” 

George, for all his daring, said, “Come and get it.”

Dream did. With a smile. 

New York waited for him. So did the next season of the Lily Theater, with Wilbur’s writing and George’s scores and Dream’s fantastic acting. George wondered how he had ever lived his life so lonely and so sequestered away. 

How _miserable_ Yale seemed! How open the whole world was to him! George thought back to the feelings he had, waiting there in Grand Central Station with his luggage, bored and apathetic about the remainder of his life. He couldn’t imagine himself in his old shoes. He could barely see himself as the lost and lonely boy who moved to New York to learn responsibility. 

Oh, how alive he felt! 

* * *

(The war loomed on the horizon, overwhelming and ominous, and always approaching closer.)

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoyed please leave kudos/comments! they really make my day <3


End file.
